At last. But not for the two female PhD students informed last week that their families, including children, while eligible for visas, are not eligible for evacuation. Gutting.

My analysis about Elon Musk's "awkward surprise appearance" at a far-right rally in London is out now on @theconversation.com I'm discussing how all this connects to the politics and economics of social media companies. Yes, it's about money and democracy.

But jesus the way managers have put our futures in the hands of unscrupulous actors.... www.ft.com/content/3f49...

My thoughts on Palestines's recognition: - they aren't illegal or condoning Hamas - they make those that don't recognise Palestine more isolated - they will improve Palestinian diplomacy - but aren't enough for stopping Israel's war and occupation. More: theconversation.com/the-uk-canad...

A quick street view reveals the flooding in Penketh isn’t because “the drains don’t work”. It’s because residents paved over their front gardens to park cars. Those gardens used to soak up about 70% of rainfall. They removed the sponge. Now the water’s on their doorstep.

The team that brought you ‘Shaping for Excellence’ at Leicester, which ended in several colleagues winning unfair dismissal cases at employment tribunal, are now doing their best to shape Bangor for something too, but, once again, it doesn’t look to be excellence.

Some hopeful weekend reading. “This is nature’s emergency recovery mechanism. We’ve buggered almost everything up but this will still bring them back.”

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Big day for Northern Ireland. At the heart of it are the victims and a way I hope to find the imperfection resolution that comes with profound loss and harm on all sides of our community. Some interesting new legal and political innovations in here. www.irishnews.com/news/norther...

The first lines of Conor Gearty's Guardian obituary really do hit home why we needed this man now more than ever: www.theguardian.com/law/2025/sep...

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

'Time to accept that Britain, or more specifically, England – as the far right is much less prominent in Scotland and Wales – is not an exception to the global trend.' 1/2

Every year, billions of vehicles worldwide shed an estimated 6 million tonnes of tire fragments. These tiny flakes of plastic, generated by normal driving, account for 28% of microplastics entering the environment globally. Heavy vehicles eg SUVs/EVs especially. Via @us.theconversation.com

#OtD 17 Sep 1963 Raghbir Singh, a Sikh man, became the first person of colour to work on a bus in Bristol, England after a mass campaign forced the dropping of the "colour bar" by bosses and the TGWU union the previous month stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8946...

This is genuinely (academically) dystopian — Kings featuring a lecturer who has to mark 100 scripts in a fortnight (!) and presenting AI as the approved workaround to that problem. This is why we can’t let this stuff into our working practice…

‘Expanded ground assault’? It’s ethnic cleansing pure and simple -no euphemisms are required for Israeli war crimes.

Obviously we all know Bluesky is a retirement home for elder millennials but, if you happen to know any 18-30 people who might like to take a shot at this, do pass it on!

What can we learn from the pioneers who started the citizen science beach cleanup movement? I wrote about the lessons we can learn from their plastics activism for the conversation.

A good piece about the situation in Australia HE (several years ahead of the rest of the Anglosphere in destroying its sector). Consultants must go - but before that happens, knowledge of what they do must increase among uni communities. Many don't even know consultants are involved in the debacle.

Some personal news: I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting. Thread incoming. substack.com/@karenattiah...

"The lough supplies 40% of Northern Ireland's drinking water, which is treated and said to be safe. Not everyone is convinced." In our @politicalquarterly.bsky.social piece, Elliott and I argued that this concern might be the best hope of spurring action. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Today people went around my neighborhood in north east London spray painting St George’s crosses onto people’s homes. Many of these houses have non British people living in them. This is getting very dark, very quick.

Elon, speaking at the Tommy Robinson march today: “This is a government against the people and not for the people, this is why everyone is gathered here today…we don’t have another four years…there’s got to be a dissolution of parliament” And the government just…continues to use X.

Feel like I’m going insane with the revisionist history that Charlie Kirk fostered open debate. He chilled speech and his targeting of professors for wrongthink led to threats, harassment, and being forced out of their jobs. His legacy is chilling speech right now, about him

Important story about systemic failures - from the tragic state of Scarborough’s once magnificent Grand Hotel to the policy failures which have been exploited by private providers, at huge cost to the good of both communities and those in need.

We're organising an @ipsa.org Research Committees Colloquium in Bolzano/Bozen in June 2026, to be hosted by @euracminorities.bsky.social and @autonomyexperience.bsky.social. We welcome papers on all aspects of politics of and in ethnically plural societies. sites.google.com/view/ipsarc1...

An economy that is turning towards almost exclusively graft, speculation, fraud and gambling to obtain wealth, which is basically what we currently have, is going to only create more conditions that lead to social isolation and violence.

🌊 Northern Ireland’s largest freshwater lake, Lough Neagh, is in crisis. Toxic algae blooms, pollution and political deadlock have pushed it to the brink. Can Rights of Nature offer a path to protection? 

These two paragraphs, these two statements one after the other is quite something.

From historian & AAUP Academic Freedom Committee member Joan Scott: “…the stakes we have in a democratic system of education are always under threat. For those of us who value it, the fight for its preservation is an urgent, if never-ending, challenge.” #DefendHigherEd

Spoke to @yannquilcaille.bsky.social and @soniaseneviratne.bsky.social about their new study in Nature. They finds dozens of heat waves would be "virtually impossible" without the activity of major fossil fuel producers. Read on ⬇️ @npr.org to learn about their methodologies + why the work matters.

Juliet Samuel in The Times today, giving a remarkably selective account of the ECHR's development, especially when the UK was using torture techniques in the 1970s in NI, and was only held (partially) to account under the ECHR. The sort of triumph of forgetting in which London columnists specialise.

Hello Bluesky! We're @ipsa.org Research Committee 14 Politics and Ethnicity. We're looking forward to sharing news from the RC and its members with you all here.

On Wednesday, the GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee voted 34-28 along party lines to advance a funding bill that calls for excluding people living in the states without legal status from #2030Census results that the 14th Amendment says must include “whole number of persons in each state”

Comparing the Copernicus imagery of Lough Neagh between 2023 and 2025 shows how the blue-green algae situation has been even worse this year.

Incredible paragraphs from Allison Morris here

Blue-green algae linked toxins found in flesh of fish from Lough Neagh for the first time 👇 #pollution #health open.substack.com/pub/theearth...

Anti-Islamic biker gang members run security at deadly Gaza aid sites www.bbc.com/news/article... I read this with utter disbelief. But maybe I should stop being so surprised.

'Oh, you mean the number has soared/increased from 23% in March 2020 to 24% in September 2025?' yougov.co.uk/topics/polit...

That's dire. UTV Live the source of this picture from Lough Neagh.

A Co Down grandmother has been escorted from Stormont after attempting to show MLAs a ‘smoothie’ made from Lough Neagh water. Bea Shrewsbury, from Donaghadee, was asked to leave the building after arriving with her ‘Lough Neagh smoothie’, which she planned to present to "smooth talking MLAs".

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

The thing about investing in public transit is that it *scales* — the more people use it, the better it gets. For everyone. Whereas the more cars there are, the *worse* everything about driving gets. Traffic. Parking. [Ever noticed that in just about every car ad it’s alone on the road? Yeah.]

Farage is getting ready for power, but his party is becoming much more politically extreme than he is. If he gets the chance, will he give them what they want? ✏️ @jamesrball.com

I spent years researching and trying to explain the imperial boomerang to people and he just … tweeted this out

Some (no doubt annoyingly) glass-half-full reflections on REF2029 pause, for academic and PS staff involved in HEI submission(s). If, like me, you're having to deal with the hiatus in the known unknowns, what's a viable approach to take? Some very preliminary thoughts. 1/7

Apart from the BBC & Independent media coverage of our Rural Racsm report findings has been predictably abysmal, attempting to dismiss & discredit it rather than to engage with its serious, robust findings. You can read our reports here: le.ac.uk/hate-studies...

‘If no one were exposed to air pollution, there would be three fewer cases of dementia for every 100 people who develop it now’ on.ft.com/45Rpury

We need a word for the mixture of amusement and terror one feels when very powerful people say fucking stupid things.